Collaboration augments research value

It is no secret that academia can be a competitive environment with positions, resources and funding opportunities in short supply. It’s a culture that can lead researchers to insist that their approach is superior and most worthy of recognition.

Against that backdrop, projects like the recently published Working Together: Collective Action, the Commons and Multiple Methods in Practice are a welcome relief, both for their content and intellectual rigour.

Amy Poteete, political science professor, is one of the three co-authors of the volume which argues, through case studies and meta-analysis, for the advantages of exploring multiple methodologies in addressing research problems. The book addresses both the positive outcomes, and potential pitfalls of the decision to take methodological risks.

Poteete’s years of field analysis on natural resource management, primarily in Botswana, was combined with the analysis of co-authors Marco Janssen, a mathematician with expertise in agent-based modeling, and Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom founder and senior research director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington.

The three met at that interdisciplinary research centre, while Poteete and Janssen were completing post-docs about a decade ago. “We were both doing our separate thing, working with Lin,” recalls Poteete. It was Ostrom who recognized that the two were working on similar puzzles involving natural resources, although Jannsen’s work was based on computer modelling and Poteete was writing extensively about her field research.

Ostrom proposed the three collaborate on a meta-analysis of methodological practices and a synthesis of theoretical developments in research on collective action for natural resource management. The result of that undertaking, Working Together, was published this year by Princeton University Press. The title of the project reflects the content of the research, but also the experience of the project.

Although Ostrom was clearly the most practiced of the three researchers, the work benefited from their combined energy. “It would have been difficult for Lin and Marco to have done that research without me, and difficult for Marco and me to do it without her,” says Poteete reflecting on the range of experience and specialization the three brought to the project. “We were aided because we came together on common research questions.”

The three met in a research environment that stresses the importance of how research is done as much as on results. Poteete found the environment rich for exposing researchers to different methods and practices. “Status didn’t matter, we were all learning about research.”

The opportunity to meet researchers using a range of approaches and ideas is rare. In some contexts, Janssen found himself caught between social scientists who did not understand his mathematical models and computer scientists who were wary of his ongoing work in the social sciences. Poteete added, “I have had that experience with people from other disciplines when after 30 minutes or an hour you realize you are talking past each other. After a while, you get used to the experience of using the same terms and finding they have different meanings.”

She acknowledges that some researchers may engage with others outside of their field at conferences or workshops, but ultimately they rely on their own familiar methods and practices when it comes to publishing and presenting their work.

Poteete herself has begun to move out of her own comfort zone in her research, partly influenced by the project. Having worked extensively on natural resource management policy, her recent work in Botswana (she was just there this summer) led her to consider how policy is applied, which in turn has led her to research electoral politics.

This then led her to consider how different forms of party politics (single party strongholds vs. regions of oppositional politics) may or may not impact policy adoption and, ultimately resource allocation and management. In a recent article, Poteete traced the interaction between shifts in the competitiveness of elections and policies in Botswana. The article, entitled “Is Development Path Dependent or Political? A Reinterpretation of Mineral-Dependent Development in Botswana,” won the Dudley Seers Memorial Prize for Volume 45 of the Journal of Development Studies. To further test her theories (and her ideas about methodologies), she will be comparing her findings in Botswana with those in Senegal and Tanzania in future research.

She recognizes she’ll need partners and support while working there, “I’ve accumulated a depth of experience in Botswana since the 90s. I’m not going to acquire that in a couple of trips.”

These kinds of shifts in focus, direction and need for seeking out expertise elsewhere all have the potential to deepen a researcher’s work, but also take time that is not always available in the competitive halls of departments. Poteete would like to see that change.

Poteete recalled a grant available when she was a doctoral student at Duke University that specifically funded an extra year of study for the student to take on additional methodological training and challenges. The student’s institution had to allow the extra time such an undertaking would require. Although Poteete recognizes that demonstrating the importance of multidisciplinary work is not a new concept, she hopes that the arguments in Working Together help reinforce the message so that more funding bodies will offer programs like that one.

Hear the interview with Amy Poteete: